Tuesday, 9 December 2014

EVERYTHING HAS GONE DIGITAL

By the mid 1990s
the art renaissance in North America was all but over. I tend to blame the art
reproduction market, which was misrepresented and oversold. Of course, there
were also a series of ups and downs in the stock market. Sales dropped off, and
it became even harder for artists to survive.

At about this
same time there was a hint that a revolution of sorts was about to take place.
We were beginning to hear about computers, and how they were going to change
the world. Some even suggested that they could revolutionize the publishing
world, and make things easier for artists. In 1999, I believe, I purchased a
computer. It was a Mac IIVI. It had a 80 megabyte hard drive, and 4 megabytes
of random access memory. I asked the sales person at the time if I’d need more
memory, and he replied to the effect that 80 megabytes would be all the memory
that I‘d ever need (my personal computer
today has 500 gigabytes of memory). It also cost a small fortune, something
in the neighbourhood of $4,000.00. Of course I also needed a black and white
printer, a Hewlett Packard laser jet costing another $2,000.00, and a digital scanner.

I’d always had
an interest in reading and writing, and despite the fact that my Secondary
School teacher wasn’t thrilled by my writings, I decided that with this new
technology I’d write a book. I had an idea for a sketchbook about Algonquin
Provincial Park. I approached several publishers about my idea. There response
was nil to being lukewarm. One publisher telephoned me and said that the idea
was good, but that Tom Thomson had, with his art, “ said it all”. He went on to
say that if I wished I could write a book about Tom Thomson and include a few
of my sketches, which he would consider publishing. I declined.

I stubbornly
went ahead with my idea. I spent a couple of years sketching and painting in
Algonquin under all kinds of conditions; all the while learning how to use the
computer. As publishers were not interested in publishing my efforts I decided
to publish digitally. Adobe had come up with PDF files that could be read
universally, so I set about to learn how to create a PDF file. Back in those
days one couldn’t just hit File -Save as a pdf , one had to create a PDF
file. Adobe Acrobat 5 came with a huge book.

In 2001 I put
together two books, A QUIET SOLITUDE, and WHERE RAVEN PLAYS-An Artist’s Guide
to Algonquin Provincial Park. I located a music CD publisher and published
digitally.

I was told by
book publishers that “no one would ever read a book on a computer”.

And, here we are
today. The publishers that I attempted to interest in my book are now out of
business, and digital publications are set to overtake the paper books.

As for my first
digital books, it is true that they were a difficult sell. It took a decade for
PDF files to be readily accepted, but I did sell a good number of my digital
books, enough to pay for the publishing costs plus a few dollars for a
hamburger, or two, and I continue to write and publish digitally.

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About Me

My name is Ernest Andrew Somers. I’m all grown up now. My hair, what’s left of it, is grey and I’m, as they say, long in the tooth.
What seems like only yesterday, but was really quite a long time ago, I was asked what I was going to be when I grew up. I remember saying that when I grow up I’m going to be an artist. And, you know what? I did become an artist. But it wasn’t as simple as that, there’s more to my story, much more.